Linkswitch Mashup
Ahoy all ye tanned inhabitants of Australia or its surrounding areas: Freelance Switch sister-site FlashDEN is giving away one free ticket to WebDU, the biggest web technology conference in the southern hemisphere for Flash, Flex, Air and Web Design. Attendants will receive hands-on technical training, new skills and breaking news from inside the web industry.
Head to the contest post and leave a comment explaining why you deserve a ticket to be in the running to win. Don’t forgot to show some love to the new FlashDEN blog while you’re there :).
The winner will be mingling with salaried and “secure” (read: bored) counterparts, so it might be worth brushing up on the most aggravating assumptions people make about freelancers working from home. If you know what to expect, you can prepare a witty riposte in advance. To sturdy up your defenses even more, you might also want to identify the 10 most common misconceptions people make about the self-employed. Unfortunately for me, number 9, “You only work 45 minutes a day, and the rest of the time is spent playing video games,” became a truth when I discovered a particularly addictive Table Tennis Flash game… And to add insult to injury, my real-life Table Tennis skills have actually deteriorated. (Once I struggled to get the ball over the net. Now I struggle to hit the table at all.)
I’ve since recovered from my Flash addiction, but the same can’t be said for some designers. To chastise them all, Samuel Ryan argues that there are six places Flash doesn’t belong. Because we love Flash (when appropriate), here are nine places Flash does belong.
But are we just getting caught up in the details? K. Curtis Shontz points out the warning signs for designers with one of the cutest metaphors I’ve ever heard: “Details are the shelled pistachio nuts of our craft; once we’ve started in on them, there’s just no stopping. The problem is that, while there’s usually a finite supply of pistachios in a bag, when it comes to putting the finishing touches on our work, there may seem to be no finish at all.”
On the other hand, it might have been your obsession with detail that made blessedly unsuited to cubicle life. Or maybe it was your tendency to twitch uncontrollably whenever speaking to the boss. Karen Morath asks: are soloists just corporate misfits?
Judging by our tendency to fill our home office with everything implicitly not allowed in a corporate office — huge monitors, fuzzy toys, live animals, et al. — the small acts of rebellion apparently don’t end as soon as we leave the cubicle. We’re misfits, but we’re happy!
Well, most of the time. Sometimes we’re not. Sometimes keeping business and personal life (mentally) separate is not such a good idea. Business can affect your personal life, and your personal life can affect business. For that reason, delving deep every once in a while is important. You might just discover some deep dark challenges you didn’t know you were facing.
Other challenges might not be apparent until later on — like an incoming famine, otherwise known as those periods of inactivity most freelancers become acquainted with at one time or another (barring the ultra high-achievers who make us all feel kinda guilty and inspired at the same time). Next time, be one of them by skipping out of the feast/famine cycle entirely. Just remember, on the flip-side, that it’s not healthy to feast all the time, either.
Original post by FreelanceSwitch.com